Instead of greeting two male gamers wearing Halo and Call of Duty shirts, prominent gamer and actress Felicia Day crossed the street.

“Seeing another gamer on the street used to be an auto-smile opportunity, or an entry into a conversation starting with, ‘Hey, dude! I love that game too!’ the Supernatural actress wrote on her Tumblr. But for the first time maybe in my life, on that Saturday afternoon, I walked towards that pair of gamers and I didn’t smile. I didn’t say hello. In fact, I crossed the street so I wouldn’t walk by them. A small voice of doubt in my brain now suspected that those guys and I might not be comrades after all. That they might not greet me with reflected friendliness, but contempt.”

That change is GamerGate — an online movement where a small subset of gamers have harassed female media critics, developers and bloggers with violent and graphic death and rape threats.
Feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian, who was driven from her home by gamers’ threats, recently had to cancel a speaking engagement at Utah State University after a letter threatened a massacre if the school did not cancel its event. While the written threat was jarring, Sarkeesian cancelled her talk because of Utah’s concealed carry laws, which meant the school couldn’t guarantee her safety. Game developers Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn have also had to leave their homes because of the massive amount of death and rape threats.

Day said she has kept quiet on GamerGate, which recently forced Intel to pull advertising from gaming site Gamasutra, largely out of “self-protection and fear.”

“I have been terrified of inviting a deluge of abusive and condescending tweets into my timeline. I did one simple @ reply to one of the main victims several weeks back, and got a flood of things I simply couldn’t stand to read directed at me. I had to log offline for a few days until it went away. I have tried to re-tweet a few of the articles I’ve seen dissecting the issue in support, but personally I am terrified to be doxxed (having personal information such as an address, email or real name released online) for even typing the words ‘Gamer Gate.’”

In fact, Day was reportedly doxxed within an hour of writing her post on GamerGate. The immediate doxxing of female GamerGate critics, including Day, has been pointed to as an example of the sexism of the movement. Former NFL player Chris Kluwe, who wrote his own post calling GamerGaters “basement-dwelling, cheetos-huffing, poopsock-sniffing douchepistols,” said Day was only targeted because of her gender.

“None of you fucking #gamergate tools tried to dox me, even after I tore you a new one. I’m not even a tough target…Instead, you go after a woman who wrote why your movement concerns her,” Kluwe said on Twitter.

In her post, Day explains that, like 18 percent of internet users, she’s experienced her share of severe harassment, and has even had stalkers show up on her doorstep. But that while she is sickened by the stigma and fear GamerGate has had on the community, she encourages everyone to keep gaming.
“Games are beautiful, they are creative, they are worlds to immerse yourself in. They are art. And they are worth fighting for, even if the atmosphere is ugly right now,” Day said. And that odds are the gamer guys she avoided on the street weren’t part of GamerGate and “would have been awesome to talk to.”

Complaints of tech companies’ lax online harassment policies have escalated as tech and gaming circles have try to combat criticism of a culture that shuts out and abuse women and minorities.

Twitter has been heavily criticized for not taking online threats seriously. In July, users derailed an online Q&A with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo by pointing the conversation to the site’s toothless online harassment policies. Twitter also caught flack in 2013 when the site made it so blocked users could still follow and see posts from the users that blocked them. The policy was reversed and Twitter has since vowed to revamp its policies after Zelda Williams, daughter of late actor and comic Robin Williams, received graphic images of her father after his death in August.

"This is supposed to be a happy occasion... Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
-- The King of Swamp Castle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

"Nothing of consequence happened today. " -- Diary of King George III, July 4, 1776

"This is not bad; this is a conspiracy to remove happiness from existence. It seeks to wrap its hedgehog hand around the still beating heart of the personification of good and squeeze until it is stilled."
-- Chuck Sonnenburg on Voyager's "Elogium"

That change is GamerGate — an online movement where a small subset of gamers have harassed female media critics, developers and bloggers with violent and graphic death and rape threats.

What the fuck, did they not even google the term before writing this?

The first fucking result is the wiki article which has a load of legitimate news pieces on the issue linked.

Gamergate (sometimes referred to as GamerGate or as a hashtag #gamergate) is a controversy in video game culture which began in August 2014. It concerns ingrained[1] issues of sexism and misogyny in the gaming community, as well as journalistic ethics in the online gaming press, particularly conflicts of interest between video game journalists and developers.[2][3][4][5][6]

The controversy came to wider attention due to a sustained campaign of harassment that indie game developer Zoe Quinn was subjected to after an ex-boyfriend posted numerous allegations on his blog in August 2014, including that she had a "romantic relationship"[7] with a Kotaku journalist, which prompted concerns that the relationship led to positive media coverage for her game. Although these concerns proved unfounded,[8][a] allegations about journalistic ethics continued to clash with allegations of harassment and misogyny.[10] Other topics of debate have included perceived changes or threats to the "gamer" identity as a result of the ongoing maturation and diversification of the gaming industry.[2][3][4][5]

"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom WolfePardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton

Former NFL player Chris Kluwe, who wrote his own post calling GamerGaters “basement-dwelling, cheetos-huffing, poopsock-sniffing douchepistols,

I love it.

Chris Kluwe's a badass.

The fact that "gamergate" has really started to hit the celebrity gamers like Day and Kluwe, though, is interesting in that now there's likely to be a lot more light shined on its most undesirable mouth-breathers. Hopefully, they will shrivel up and go crawl back into their holes.

Classic. GamersGate = "death and rape threats to women!" now. They're trying to pour paint all over the issue to obscure the point of the controversy, which is journalistic ethos, with "wow these guys sure are poopyheads".

Kaku Of The Monsoon wrote:Classic. GamersGate = "death and rape threats to women!" now. They're trying to pour paint all over the issue to obscure the point of the controversy, which is journalistic ethos, with "wow these guys sure are poopyheads".

Bullshit. This started as a public diatribe against a woman game developer's personal life, and everything else has been a veneer. Or you can freely point to the boycott of video games by Warner Brothers over their explicit contractual demands that YouTubers and reviewers not say anything negative about the game Shadows of Mordor, or a boycott of Eidos games over Eidos putting pressure to have a reviewer fired for giving one of their games a relatively negative rating in a fairly critical review.

Oh, wait, none of those things have happened.

But we do have a prominent GGer promising to hire a PI to follow Zoe Quinn around, and Return of Kings (noted MRM and misogynist site) is hiring a GamerGate correspondent.

Terralthra wrote:
Bullshit. This started as a public diatribe against a woman game developer's personal life, and everything else has been a veneer. Or you can freely point to the boycott of video games by Warner Brothers over their explicit contractual demands that YouTubers and reviewers not say anything negative about the game Shadows of Mordor, or a boycott of Eidos games over Eidos putting pressure to have a reviewer fired for giving one of their games a relatively negative rating in a fairly critical review.

Oh, wait, none of those things have happened.

But we do have a prominent GGer promising to hire a PI to follow Zoe Quinn around, and Return of Kings (noted MRM and misogynist site) is hiring a GamerGate correspondent.

A) I'd like to point out that by the very nature of the URLs you posted, this doesn't seem like a balanced summary by an impartial commentator.

B) Your opening statement is untrue. This started as Zoe Quinn's ex boyfriend posting about how she had been banging a Kotaku writer, and GG started because of undeclared connections between Zoe Quinn and Kotaku (which are nonsense, because it wasn't even the same writer that reviewed her game, but that's not my point).

Yes, there was the moron force that took to stalking and harassing Zoe Quinn, I have no intention of denying that at all, but that is a separate issue from GamersGate itself; GG is definitionally about ethics. Any attempt to attack GG as a movement by bringing in idiots harassing women is simply a form of ad hominem attack. Maybe some people call themselves a part of GG (I don't by the way; I don't have the time or will to invest in the nerd wars) and also act like dirtbags towards women in the industry. It's true and it is happening. However, that doesn't detract from the fact that there is a problem with journalism in gaming. If ethics are the stated goal of GG, that is the goal of GG and the rest is fluff. You can argue that they're incompetent at addressing the ethics problem (as you have) but it doesn't change the fact that it's a cop out to dismiss GG as people hating women.

If they didn't, their silence tells me they don't really care about ethics in games media.

This started as Zoe Quinn's ex boyfriend posting about how she had been banging a Kotaku writer, and GG started because of undeclared connections between Zoe Quinn and Kotaku (which are nonsense, because it wasn't even the same writer that reviewed her game, but that's not my point).

For that matter, what issues of ethics have GamersGate made a big deal about ?

Terralthra wrote:or a boycott of Eidos games over Eidos putting pressure to have a reviewer fired for giving one of their games a relatively negative rating in a fairly critical review.

Could I see some links about this ?
Because, while it sounds like GamersGate's silence on this issues says the same things that their silence on Shadows of Mordor does, I don't know enough of the specifics to be sure.

Kaku Of The Monsoon wrote:Yes, there was the moron force that took to stalking and harassing Zoe Quinn, I have no intention of denying that at all, but that is a separate issue from GamersGate itself; GG is definitionally about ethics. Any attempt to attack GG as a movement by bringing in idiots harassing women is simply a form of ad hominem attack. Maybe some people call themselves a part of GG (I don't by the way; I don't have the time or will to invest in the nerd wars) and also act like dirtbags towards women in the industry. It's true and it is happening. However, that doesn't detract from the fact that there is a problem with journalism in gaming. If ethics are the stated goal of GG, that is the goal of GG and the rest is fluff. You can argue that they're incompetent at addressing the ethics problem (as you have) but it doesn't change the fact that it's a cop out to dismiss GG as people hating women.

A group is defined by its membership and their actions, not some hypothetical founding charter.

By that logic, the KKK is definitionally about 'protecting the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal'. There may be a moron force but that is a seperate issue.

I can appreciate that there may have been some early #GG members genuinely upset about Kotaku for whatever reason, but the movement has long since spiralled out of their control. It is no longer accurate to describe it as being about ethics. From that perspective it's a textbook example of how using social media to promote awareness of your campaign can actually backfire spectacularly if it becomes hijacked.

My understanding is that the allegations of Zoe Quinn sleeping with reviewers to get a better review is what started GamersGate. Meaning that the misogynistic harassment isn't a hijacking of the movement, but merely them being louder about the views that formed it in the first place.
The people saying it's about ethics are lying and/or idiots.
The people wanting to make it about ethics are the ones trying to hijack it and turn it into something positive.

This started as Zoe Quinn's ex boyfriend posting about how she had been banging a Kotaku writer, and GG started because of undeclared connections between Zoe Quinn and Kotaku (which are nonsense, because it wasn't even the same writer that reviewed her game, but that's not my point).

Zoe Quinn: False allegations. GamersGate makes a big deal about them.

More importantly, the long and infamous ZoePost barely touched on any allegations of serious journalistic misconduct. It centered on how Zoe cheated on the jilted ex (sorta) with multiple people and how much that sucked. Rather than think "Hm, perhaps the jilted ex-boyfriend of a game developer might have a somewhat biased view of a relationship and its possible ramifications", GGers went on a rampage up to and including emailing nude pictures of her to her family, doxxing, stalking, harassment, death/rape threats, etc.

bilateralrope wrote:

Terralthra wrote:or a boycott of Eidos games over Eidos putting pressure to have a reviewer fired for giving one of their games a relatively negative rating in a fairly critical review.

Could I see some links about this ?
Because, while it sounds like GamersGate's silence on this issues says the same things that their silence on Shadows of Mordor does, I don't know enough of the specifics to be sure.

Oh, that's easy enough. It's all public record stuff, at this point. See here. Short form is that Eidos put out a shit game (Kane & Lynch) by IO Interactive. They bought an assload of ads for it, including a huge site-buy on GameSpot. Gerstmann reviewed said game, said, accurately, that it was not a good game. Eidos threatened to pull ads over the review (not uncommon; AAA publishers do this regularly, as I know from personal experience), and the management team bowed to pressure, firing Gerstmann to save their ad dollars. The management in question no longer works there, but the practice of wielding ad buys as weapons to extort good reviews is absolutely still common practice in games journalism, especially by AAA publishers (since they're the ones with money for huge ad buys)

bilateralrope wrote:My understanding is that the allegations of Zoe Quinn sleeping with reviewers to get a better review is what started GamersGate. Meaning that the misogynistic harassment isn't a hijacking of the movement, but merely them being louder about the views that formed it in the first place.

As noted, the post in question was way more about how Quinn is a BadPerson (tm) because she slept with people her ex-boyfriend didn't think she should have. I might've had a little bit of sympathy for the guy if he was a friend complaining to me personally, since he clearly took the breakup pretty hard, but he lost any sympathy with that huge post.

Your fundamental mistake is classifying it as some sort of group or collective. It isn't. #GamerGate is stated as being a position on gaming journalism and ethics. That's all that's relevant. To whitewash all of GG with misogyny is just as bad as if someone said that GGers have never done anything misogynistic. Even the Civil Rights movement had violence from the black community. Doesn't mean the aims of the CRM was race riots.

Oh, that's easy enough. It's all public record stuff, at this point. See here.

Ah, that's the incident I could find. Given it became public over two years ago, I read much into GamersGate being silent on that issue as nothing of relevance to it has happened since GG became a thing.

I was thinking you were referring to something that happened more recently.

Kaku Of The Monsoon wrote:#GamerGate is stated as being a position on gaming journalism and ethics.

You keep making this claim. Prove it.

Just so you know what I'm asking for: Show me GamerGate talking about an issue of journalism and ethics that isn't attacking women.

Shadows of Mordor is an example of one issue. One that happened very recently. One that GG being silent on is very suspicious if they really care about ethics. But it's not the only one I would accept as proof.

Kaku Of The Monsoon wrote:GamerGate is not a group or organization. It started as a twitter hashtag. It's still a twitter hashtag. If you look at the twitter hashtag, it's still not about harassing women:

Your fundamental mistake is classifying it as some sort of group or collective. It isn't. #GamerGate is stated as being a position on gaming journalism and ethics. That's all that's relevant. To whitewash all of GG with misogyny is just as bad as if someone said that GGers have never done anything misogynistic. Even the Civil Rights movement had violence from the black community. Doesn't mean the aims of the CRM was race riots.

Hey, Palm Fucker. Care to provide a meaningful number of instances of GamerGaters calling out IGN? Gamespot? Any of the other big name companies that seem to never give a bad review to the big releases? Or just stuff targeting women?

The hashtag on Twitter really isn't doing any favors on that count, you know. "Ethics" is a smokescreen at best. If it were about ethics, you wouldn't be seeing women getting doxx'ed and men simply being targeted by angry words. Chris Kluwe has been riffing on you skid marks constantly on Twitter. He hasn't been doxx'ed over it. Felicia Day says that the behavior by the "movement" makes her nervous and she gets doxx'ed within the hour. How is that not the movement being filled with sexist skunk felchers? Got a handwave for the massively unbalanced treatment women are receiving when they speak ill of the Mountain Dew swillers? Because there's a big fucking difference.

If you can't provide ample evidence of people calling the major game review sites to task for frankly unreliable reviews you'd be best served by actually stopping and thinking about what the movement has accomplished and who it's been attacking.

But you know that it isn't really about ethics, don't you? You just want to try and save face now that cover has been blown on the founders of the movement and the paste eaters that blindly support it. You actually can accomplish sentence structure and put forward the appearance of someone who is actually literate. So I'm forced to conclude you're just a rancid, fetid piece of shit that wants women to leave your games alone. Given your join date, I'm going to conclude that you came here just to try and defend the paint eaters.

Just so you know what I'm asking for: Show me GamerGate talking about an issue of journalism and ethics that isn't attacking women.

Shadows of Mordor is an example of one issue. One that happened very recently. One that GG being silent on is very suspicious if they really care about ethics. But it's not the only one I would accept as proof.

Who is "GamerGate"? Unless you define this, it's meaningless. But okay:

Just so you know what I'm asking for: Show me GamerGate talking about an issue of journalism and ethics that isn't attacking women.

Shadows of Mordor is an example of one issue. One that happened very recently. One that GG being silent on is very suspicious if they really care about ethics. But it's not the only one I would accept as proof.

Who is "GamerGate"? Unless you define this, it's meaningless. But okay:

Somehow, I doubt that a tweet that you made a minute before linking it here qualifies as evidence.

どうして？お前が夜に自身お触れるから。Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting Master of Darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil,
but a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow
was struck, I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future, where my evil is law! Now, the fool
seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku...
-Aku, Master of Masters, Deliverer of Darkness, Shogun of Sorrow

Just so you know what I'm asking for: Show me GamerGate talking about an issue of journalism and ethics that isn't attacking women.

Shadows of Mordor is an example of one issue. One that happened very recently. One that GG being silent on is very suspicious if they really care about ethics. But it's not the only one I would accept as proof.

Who is "GamerGate"? Unless you define this, it's meaningless. But okay:

Somehow, I doubt that a tweet that you made a minute before linking it here qualifies as evidence.

That's exactly my point. The hashtag is GamerGate. If you're concerned about journalism in gaming. You can complain that GGers are mostly bad but #GG is not. It's an idea and it's perfectly alright as one.

locked. We already have a thread about the misogynist cretins on this board.

Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------My LPs

Let it be known that Kaku of the Monsoon was banned for being a useless trolling waste of space and apologist for the kind of misogynistic assholes involved in the #gamersgate "controversy" who like to make rape and death threats against women who don't defer to them.